Series Love and a Sale

I love connected books! Dipping back into the world where the characters I've fallen in love with are still living their lives, settling in with a town or place where I know I'll be visiting for a while, feeling like I'm part of an entire community. 

I love them so much I've written another series about a family - the Hawke brothers. The first The Nanny Proposition is already out (and now on sale!), the second Bidding on Her Boss will be out in September, and the third, His 24-Hour Wife will be out in October.

So to help celebrate my love of series, I want to share some of my favourite series with you, and ask for some of your recommendations back!


Nora Roberts, Three Sisters Island Trilogy
Dance Upon the Air, Heaven and Earth, Face the Fire

I loved the light paranormal element (all three heroines are witches), the island community, the gorgeous heroes, and pretty much everything about these books. I read them years ago - in fact, they were my first Noras - and have reread them since. In fact, I might be due for a re-read now!

Eloisa James, The Essex Sisters
Much Ado About You, Kiss Me Annabel, The Taming of the Duke, Pleasure For Pleasure

I adored these books about the five Essex sisters who are sent to live with their guardian - a drunk duke who needs to pull himself together. My favourite hero of the books was that duke, Rafe - his story of redemption was gorgeous.

Jill Shalvis, Lucky Harbor
Too many titles to list, but the first three are great - Simply Irresistible, The Sweetest Thing, Head Over Heels. 

These first three of the Lucky Harbor books are about three sisters who've grown up apart and are brought together by the death of their mother and their inheritance of an old inn. The heroes are amazing, and bringing the inn back to life is fun, but I especially loved the sisters element.

JK Rowling, Harry Potter

I recently watched the early movies again and they reminded me of my love for the series. Next time I have a chance, I'm reading all seven books again. Book 5 The Order of the Phoenix was always my favourite (and I've read the entire series about five times), but it's been a while since I read them through and I'm wondering if I'll have a different fave this time?

Actually, thinking about my favourite series (and believe me, there were heaps more, including Susan Elizabeth Philips's footballers, and Sylvia Day's Crossfire books) has me wondering why I ever write anything but connected stories! Now my Hawke Brothers will be out in the world, I think I need to start plotting another family series. :)

To celebrate the next two Hawke Brothers books, Liam's story The Nanny Proposition is on special for 99c for a short time, so if you've wanted to grab a copy, now is a good time!

And now I'm standing by to hear about your favourite series, and I'll send a copy of Bidding on Her Boss to one commenter. Hit me!

When I Grow Up

Writers tend to play the "When I Grow Up" card often.  As in, "When I grow up I want to be Nora Roberts." Or Eloisa James or Marion Lennox or Barbara Samuel or Nalini Singh.  It's not so much an envy thing as a respect thing: respect for the writer, the woman and her work.  (Also we live a lot of our lives in a fantasy world!)

But long before I started respecting the dickens out of brilliant women who write brilliant books, I was a reader and there were only the books, which I immersed myself in from my early teens.  My introduction to romance was through the serialised abridged versions of Mills & Boons in an English  magazine which my mother bought for the recipes, knitting patterns and famous people. English Womens Weekly, I think?

Condensed, serialised, once a week, was never going to be enough.  To feed my obsession I haunted the op shop, picking up pre-loved M&Bs and Barbara Cartlands and Lucy Walkers.  Lucy Walker was my favourite and my absolute favourite stories featured a governess brought to the Australian outback by a tall, dark enigmatic stranger.  In my favourite of favourites he was A Man Named Masters, which I still think is an inspired title.

I wanted to be that governess.  Not only to the extent of living the story through her eyes in her point of view as a stranger to the outback and to masterful, enigmatic men, but I decided that: when I grow up, I want to be a governess in the outback.  To the extent that I longed for the weekly arrival of The Land and Weekly Times newspapers almost as much as the English Womens Weekly, because I covertly scoured the classifieds for such jobs.  (Being an early teen I was able to gloss right over the facts, such as the children. I was only thinking of the outback and the romance.)

I moved on, although I never stopped living the stories I read through the eyes of the heroine.  While immersed in a fabulous story, I've wanted to be a hard-edged FBI agent, an English aristocrat, a ride-at-full-tilt polo player, an attorney with all the smarts and all the lines, a doctor with the heart and the courage to work beyond borders, and a score of others.  That is what romance novels have given me: fabulous stories by fabulous women about fabulous women.

I don't need ask if anyone else is inspired by the books we love.  Or if anyone was as obsessive about romance in their early teens as I, but I will ask if anyone read books in those formative years which inspired "When I grow up, I want to be…" dreams.  Perhaps ones as fantastical as mine, perhaps ones with a tad more realism.

PS: In a weirdish moment of synchronicity, a spam email landed in my inbox while I was finishing this post with the subject line: Did You Dream of Being A Teacher?